After years of working with businesses of all sizes to implement customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, I’ve realized successful implementation begins with understanding how the end-user wants to interface with application.
CRM helps sales professionals manage a company’s interactions with current and future customers and is used across all departments in the organization. Ultimately, the primary users will be sales professionals.
When considering how those users would want to interact with a CRM, take into account their work environment. If you have people who are out in the field all day interacting with prospective clients face-to-face, is it realistic to ask them to spend their evenings behind a computer inputting information about the day’s activities? Alternatively, if you ask them to input information while in the field, do you know what that’s going to cost you and your sales team in terms of reduced face-to-face time?
Here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering user adoption:
- Am I making it easier for the end user to use?
- Am I creating work flow automation?
- Am I making data input as automated as possible?
- Am I helping the end user achieve their goals?
When it comes to implementation, it’s important to reiterate to the team that a CRM is all about client relationship management and helping your team perform their job more effectively. A CRM dashboard can show an individual’s sales performance in real time. Whenever they log into the dashboard, they’ll see how much revenue they’ve generated so far this month, how many client meetings they had, upcoming appointments, follow up reminders, and anything else your sales formula would need to include to help them achieve their financial goals.
A good CRM is a personal goal tracking dashboard that will also help management monitor daily activities. The sales manager version of CRM software will monitor progress of the combined sales team so the manager can keep track of their own metrics and see who’s falling behind for the month and who might need additional attention, help or training.
As with any purchase and/or implementation of a new software product meant to have a strategic impact on your company, the approach should be structured and sponsored at the executive level. For more suggestions on how to avoid the CRM user adoption issue, . And if you’re interested in learning more about how my team can help your business, give us a call at (913) 234-8172.